Medical education: retrospective and prospective observations.

Significant advances in medicine have occurred in the past 50 years. Medical education, too, has undergone many changes, and is due for an in-depth study and appraisal similar to that of the 1910 Flexner report. Some of the changes in medical education discussed include excessive emphasis on incurable diseases and scientific minutiae instead of practical clinical problems, changes in the roles and images of clinical teachers, importance placed on faculty research, decline in actual patient care, and a new and welcome proliferation of training programs for family physicians. Suggestions are offered for reducing the duration of medical training, and for improving the curriculum and the education of students in medical schools today.

Non-specific passive desensitization XX: two important technical details.

For non-specific passive desensitization to be effective two steps are necessary: (1) dialyze concentrated gamma globulin precipitated from plasma or serum by ammonium sulfate and (2) allow time for complete recovery from the initial reaction to antigen aerosols before giving the desensitizing dose of gamma globulin.